of Lollies, Love, Labels, Laughter, Lessons, Life, and being the Lulu…

green tea + red bean = mouthgasm

i am now seated, in the comforts of my home, the real home in Taiping, attempting to blog.

in fact, i asked Alex (whom I am chatting with now) whether i should blog, and he said ‘should should should’.

gosh i’m blabbering again.

anyway, I AM HOME NOW, taking a break after the whole crazy roller coaster week of having my life literally engulfed by the hoos and hahs of the Drama Competition. I never had so much diarrhea in such a short week but man those butterflies were really unkind to my stomach.

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I’m just gonna start this off with a monotonous tone…

We did not placed in the State-Level Drama Competition.

Nope.

We did not.

Were we disappointed?

Yea sure.

But we did not regret any bit of it and we knew our hard work was not gone to waste… as we had real good fun, on and off stage!

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Getting to the drama competition itself was filled with challenges and pure frustration… Getting to the venue was an achievement on itself!

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First of all, we had only 1 week of practice, having to stay back everyday from 3-6pm daily.

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Second, our school only gave us RM300 budget for props and costumes. And I had to advance the money….

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Third, on the day of departure, we were asked to be ready at 8am. Turned out the PPD had clashes of events and no transportation to send us to Tumpat. After many many phone calls, complaints, and venting, we left at 6.30PM!!!!!!

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and this was one event that nearly brought me to tears.

My kids, though hungry, tired, and equally frustrated with the PPD, decided to stay back at the school surau till 6PM instead of going back home to rest. Reason being, they knew that they might be stopped by their parents if they knew about the bad management from the PPD and might be disallowed to travel to Tumpat at night. Such dedication, I can’t even express how thankful I am for their sacrifices. The female students followed Kak Didi back to her home to rest a lil (God bless her kind soul) while I gave the boys some money for ice-cream at Yoyo Snow House before they had to go and wait for hours in the surau.

So, after the many long hours, one of our vans was still on the way back from Kota Bahru @_@

But we were glad to be finally OFF.

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We reached Tumpat after midnight! And we had a whole chaotic debate with the PPD regarding our accommodation. They ‘prepared’ us a school hostel, that was far away from the venue of competition @_@

We fought through, and with the help of a student’s aunt, we found two home stays to house all 22 of us.

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The next morning was a battle itself. Trying to wake the kids up, getting them ready, and calming down their nerves.

Thank God for Nadia, who seeing how tied up I was with doing the make up for most of the kids, very proactively took their orders and went out to buy breakfast for the team.

The PPD? lazed around watching me apply makeup for the students @#$%&^

As the only person who actually uses makeup, though very basic one, i had to step up and be a ‘professional make-up artist’ LOL. Seriously, i never knew i had that in me. I was mixing and blending colors to the oohs and ahhs of students, drawing dramatic eye-liners with curves and stars, and most of the time unsure what i’m doing and was just glad that they came out looking quite good LMAO.

Some kids had fun with my mascara and eyelash curler too!

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And when we finally reached the school… we saw the school hall filled with parents… uhuh… and we were informed that the venue has been changed and OUR ALL-SO-AWESOME-PPD HAD NO FREAKING IDEA ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

Thus, we had to rush to the new venue which was quite a distance away.. A new school, in a village.

Thought the obstacles were over? Not quite.

Upon reaching the school, I was told that we can’t register the team unless i have photocopies of the participants’ IC and 5 sets of the script!!!! Once again, we were not informed. Half of them did not have their IC with them too and we had to kinda cheat our way with the IC of some non-participants. At least this time around, Mr PPD realised he screwed up again, and quickly took the ICs and the drama script to photocopy.

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After that, we were told we are Performance No. 2.

Though we felt like the sacrificial team (they tend to ‘sacrifice’ the smaller schools from rural districts aka the UNDERDOGS and indirectly help the ‘better’ schools to win), though the students were disheartened and intimidated when they saw the Big Schools arriving with truck loads of props and professional make up and theatre-like costumes (i kid you not at how grand they looked with the wigs, the accessories, the costumes, the smoke machines, their own lighting etc), Nadia and I told the kids to stop comparing with the rest, and focus on what we can bring onto the table – do better than we could.

After doing a cheer, with the other teams looking at us, our kids went up the stage with their heads held high.

Imagine their delight when the audience and judges were singing along, clapping, and some teachers were dancing at the back when they did some of the dance numbers.

Yes, I took a risk. I did a musical drama.

Knowing that we had only 1 week to prepare whereas the other teams prepared and trained daily for months; its quite impossible to do a serious, melodramatic, heart-wrenching (recipe for a winning drama) drama with meaningful lines, when my students have less than a week to fix their articulation and enunciation or memorise their lines while getting into character and at the same time prepare props from scratch.

I wanted to give them a fighting chance. Not just to send a team for the sake of sending one and have them ‘butchered’ on stage in front of many.

So I tried to get some ‘creativity’ points through our musical-ish elements and was thrilled when I found my kids enjoying the drama more.

Back to the drama competition~

When my kids came down from the stage, they were jumping in joy, and hugging Nadia and I tightly. Teachers, people whom i have no idea who they are, our PPD, and even the Yang Berhormat who was invited came over to congratulate us! People were asking which school are we from, and expressed surprise when we told them we are from Gua Musang and had only trained for a week.

After that, we went crazy with picture-taking and didn’t quite care about the competition any more… Because, we did it. We actually stepped onto the state-level stage, performed our best, and kicked some ass.

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very very glad to have Nadia on board 😉

And maybe because Nadia and I were the youngest-looking teachers and one can clearly see how well we blend in with our kids especially in camwhoring, safe to say many students from other schools were probably looking at our team with envy #syoksendiri

The other teams looked so stressed out while we were already feeling liberated. Our team decided to be the most sporting team there and we cheered during others’ performances, did hand waves, and clapped generously. Well, the other teams were really stingy in their applause though, probably due to the nerves bugs.

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As the performances went one by one, we felt really good about our drama, until the Big Schools came out… lol… They went passed the given 20 minutes but they really did a great job. Each character was believable, the setting was grand, the technical parts were quite impressive, the costumes were damn elaborate, smokes were coming out from each corner of the stage, and their articulation was real good. They seemed very well rehearsed.

At one look, their drama team probably came with a budget of at least 20grand. Then again, it was only my assumption. My boys went and chatted up with the winning team, and found out that they been practising since January. Yup. JANUARY… they are actually from the Drama Club of their schools. They do deserve the win. No doubt about that. I am actually thankful that my kids get to see all that. The exposure was well-needed, not just for them, but also for me!

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Though we didn’t win first, second or third, we were quite confident that we got number four. hahahahahahaha… We actually had a good laugh about our cocky confidence LOL. And we celebrated with PIZZA HUT in KB Mall!

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I was overjoyed when the waiters mistaken Nadia and I as students.. Oh yeah baybehhhh LMAO.

(most of our pictures are with Abdullah, which I HAVE TO REMEMBER TO GET FROM HIM)

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We reached school at 1 plus in the morning.

And had to go back to it in a few hours for the 1 Malaysia Senamrobik thingy.

IT WAS A GREAT FEAT TRYING TO DRAG MY SLEEPY ASS OUT OF BED OKAYYYYYY.

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Reflections?

This whole experience had been bitter-sweet, but very much worth it.

Will I do it all over again next year? Honestly speaking, I don’t know.

But one thing I know for sure, if there is going to be a NEXT time, I am going to put my foot down and get the school to be more supportive in terms of manpower and finances, and also get the PPD to man up and be more efficient!

Other than that, i do kinda had my hidden theatre bug awakened, and i found myself longing to be performing once again. I have always loved the stage, the limelight, to be free to express myself, to be playing a role, to sing, dance and act.

Then again, I am living my dream. A teacher does ALL of that and more.

I probably won’t find myself going professional in arts, too late for that even. But I’m glad I still have the outlets to share my talents, in church, in school, and hopefully in the lives of my kids.

hahaha totally laughed at the pix of the boys with the lash curler and mascara! I saw you had fun, and teaching, thats the actual joy – when you’re with the kids, having fun instead of being stuck doing mindless work! Keep up the good work, Felicia!